


i'll never feel whole (but you're as close as i'll get)

by earthworms



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Friends, College, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, M/M, Moving In Together, Pining, Roommates, bro i dont remember how i used to write them so this is just tooru sad pining all over the place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28684854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthworms/pseuds/earthworms
Summary: The three great truths of the universe: the sun rises in the east, the birds will always come back in the spring, and Tooru loves Iwaizumi in an irreversible, illimitable way.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	i'll never feel whole (but you're as close as i'll get)

**Author's Note:**

> not pictured is me putting on my clown makeup before i decided to start writing iwaoi again for the first time in 4 years
> 
> title is starting fires by bears in trees

The first thing Tooru does in their new apartment is write their names on a little slip of card to tuck into the empty space above their letterbox. Iwaizumi grumbles and asks whom he’s expecting to receive mail from anyway, but Tooru doesn’t mind. He likes the way their surnames squish together in his spiky handwriting, the bottom of Iwaizumi’s _M_ bleeding into the top of Tooru’s _W_.

“I can’t even _read_ that,” Iwaizumi says, when they come home from picking up groceries their first night in the apartment and Tooru pauses to slide the name card above their letterbox.

Tooru scoffs. “Well, you can’t help being illiterate, Iwa-chan.”

“Oi!” Iwaizumi swings his shopping bag into Tooru’s thigh, but it’s half-hearted at best. “You know your handwriting’s shit.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Tooru protests, though he does know. It’s too slanted and uneven to really be legible when it’s that small, and the start of Iwaizumi’s name had smudged under his thumb anyway. Still, they’re not really expecting mail. It’s the thought that counts.

Iwaizumi lets it go after that, but he absolutely draws the line at Tooru digging out the wooden initials from their childhood bedrooms. Iwaizumi’s parents had nailed the green _H_ to Iwaizumi’s bedroom door on his sixth birthday and gifted Tooru the matching blue _T_ the following month. Tooru had promptly covered his in stickers until the paint only showed through in broken patches, while Iwaizumi kept his pristine but for the permanent marker smiley face Tooru had scribbled on it when they were ten, just to piss Iwaizumi off. It _had_ pissed him off, but Tooru liked rubbing his thumb over it whenever he came into Iwaizumi’s room.

“Absolutely not. We’re _twenty_ ,” Iwaizumi says. Tooru pouts.

“Iwa-chan! It’s our first time living together,” he argues.

“Exactly. I’m old enough to live with you, Oikawa, I don’t need a letter on my door to remember which room is mine.”

“It’s nostalgic. It’s a reminder of our homes,” Tooru says. Iwaizumi shoves him gently in the head and takes the letters from him.

“You’re a reminder of my home. Why did you even pack these?”

He disappears into the hallway to deposit the initials in the cupboard they’ve unofficially deemed _Shit We Don’t Really Need But For Some Reason Brought Anyway_. Tooru is a little miffed at being shot down but he rubs a hand over his chest and thinks about being the thing that makes this apartment home for Iwaizumi.

“Hey, Oikawa?” Iwaizumi calls from somewhere further into the apartment. Tooru can’t pinpoint the exact location.

“What?” he yells back. Iwaizumi’s shadow appears in the hallway from the direction of the bathroom between their two bedrooms. He stops in the doorway to the main room—where they’ve deposited all the unopened boxes as well as two floor cushions in place of a makeshift sofa—and leans against the wall, arms folded across his chest.

“Have you called your mum yet? You know she worries.”

“Iwa-chan, we _just_ got here. I’ll call her tomorrow.”

“Arse. Don’t make her wait.”

Iwaizumi tosses Tooru’s phone at him and Tooru stumbles across a half-empty box to catch it. He doesn’t remember how Iwaizumi ended up with his phone in the first place, but it doesn’t surprise him. Iwaizumi is always doing things like that: picking up Tooru’s phone when he forgets it, or tucking a spare chapstick into Tooru’s pocket like he knows exactly when he’ll run out, or finding Tooru’s odd socks when he is _sure_ they’ve been lost in the laundry.

And anyway, he did actually promise his mum he would call once they were settled. Iwaizumi leaves the room again—a strange sort of etiquette he’s developed around phone calls, despite living almost entirely in Tooru’s personal space otherwise. Tooru ends up searching him out anyway and pressing the phone to Iwaizumi’s ear, when his mother badgers him to let her speak to “a reliable source”.

“Hm?” Iwaizumi says into the phone, leaning back against the bathroom sink. Tooru reaches behind him to rearrange the cupboard Iwaizumi had just been in the middle of filling. There’s a Godzilla mug in one corner—a gift from Tooru when they were twelve—with both of their toothbrushes inside, lined up next to one another. Tooru smiles and brushes his fingers down the handle.

“Oh, yes, he is actually fine. He’s being silly and sentimental, but you know how he gets,” Iwaizumi tells Tooru’s mum.

Tooru pinches the side of Iwaizumi’s neck in retaliation and Iwaizumi grabs his hand, squishing his fingers together until Tooru wrenches them away and takes a step back.

“The apartment’s lovely. We’re just unpacking.” Iwaizumi listens for a moment and then laughs. “I’m sure we’ll have you visit soon, once we have some actual furniture for you to sit on.”

Tooru rolls his eyes and leaves them to it. Iwaizumi isn’t terribly close with his own parents but once he gets talking to Tooru’s mum, they’ll chatter on for _hours_. Half the time, Tooru thinks Iwaizumi is only friends with him so he has an excuse to come round for tea with Tooru’s mother.

He ends up in the kitchen, sorting through their limited collection of cooking utensils. It consists of an unnecessarily large selection of mugs, a set of saucepans that Tooru’s sister had given them when she found out they were moving out of the dorms, three bowls that Tooru doesn’t think he’s actually ever seen before, and a mismatched array of cutlery that they’ve definitely pinched from the shared kitchen in their dorm building over the past year.

He puts away the groceries while he’s at it and is busy trying to figure out how the oven works—his mum has an electric one at home and Tooru isn’t sure how to light the gas—when Iwaizumi wanders back through with Tooru’s phone.

“Your mum sends her love,” he says, offering Tooru the phone. Tooru lets go of the gas knob to take it and frowns.

“She didn’t want to say goodbye?” he asks.

It isn’t that unusual really; Iwaizumi has been her favourite practically since the day she met him, but Tooru is still, technically, her only son.

“She was worried about making you more homesick.”

“I’m not homesick! I’ve been living away from home for a _year_.”

“Her words,” Iwaizumi shrugs but Tooru can tell he agrees with her.

“Are you cooking dinner?” he asks before Tooru can complain any further about his own mother using him to get to his best friend.

“Can’t figure out how to work the oven.”

Tooru holds in the knob again and listens to the _click, click, click_ of the gas sparking but it doesn’t jump into flame. Iwaizumi leans around him to see what he’s talking about.

“Dummy,” he says, knocking Tooru’s hand out of the way. “There are matches in one of the shopping bags. Pass them?”

Tooru digs through the remnants of the last bag and hands Iwaizumi a box of matches. Iwaizumi lights one, holds it against the hob, and presses in the knob until the gas catches against the open flame and flickers to life.

“Oh _sorry_ ,” Tooru says, adopting a snobbish voice that he knows is one of Iwaizumi’s least favourites. “I didn’t realise we were living in caveman times.”

Iwaizumi drives his elbow back without warning, catching Tooru just below his ribcage. Tooru yelps and brings a hand up to the spot, instinctively doubling over at the pain.

“Just for that, you can cook _and_ wash up,” Iwaizumi says but he turns around immediately afterwards and tugs Tooru’s hands out of the way, smoothing his own fingers across Tooru’s abdomen.

“Harder than I meant to,” he mumbles and rubs over the ache. Tooru half smiles before he remembers he’s supposed to be upset, but it doesn’t really matter. He knows Iwaizumi will end up doing the dishes.

#

Hanamaki’s name flashes up on Tooru’s phone later that evening while they’re stretched out on the floor cushions in front of the old box TV from Tooru’s mum’s attic. It’s in the middle of a rerun that both of them have seen and neither of them are particularly watching anyway, so Tooru takes the call.

“Makki!” he says. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Iwaizumi gets up, stacking their empty bowls and mugs from dinner, and disappears into the kitchen. Tooru straightens his legs and cracks his knees, which have begun to cramp from sitting cross-legged.

“How’s the apartment?” Hanamaki asks. Tooru can hear cupboards opening in the background which means Hanamaki is probably in the process of making dinner. He only ever calls when he’s in the middle of something else, like it only occurs to him once he needs the distraction.

“Empty. We don’t even have a _sofa_. It’s uncivilised.”

Hanamaki snorts. “Careful. Your bourgeoisie is showing. And how’s the arm candy?”

The one time Tooru feels grateful for Iwaizumi’s phone call etiquette is when Hanamaki calls. He has no regard for boundaries and insists that if Iwaizumi suspects that Tooru eyes him in secret sometimes it won’t be because of something _Hanamaki_ says.

“Shit, Makki, _arm_ candy is right,” Tooru whispers. It would be unlike Iwaizumi to eavesdrop, but the kitchen is the first room off the hallway and Tooru knows the privacy he’s been granted is performative at best.

“You are so, so fucked,” Hanamaki says cheerfully.

“I know,” Tooru says and changes the subject. “When are you and Mattsun coming to visit?”

“You don’t even have a sofa, Oikawa. I demand at least one chair before I consider stepping foot in that place.”

“Whose bourgeoisie is showing now?”

“Still yours!”

Tooru laughs and lies backwards, lifting his legs into the air to stretch them upwards. The cushion isn’t long enough for his whole torso, so his head and shoulders drop off the end onto the hardwood floor. He rolls his ankles in lazy circles, watching the muscles flex and contract in his calves. In the background, Hanamaki hums a quiet tune while he cooks.

“I like it here,” Tooru says eventually, which is the proper answer Hanamaki has been waiting for. “There’s so much more space. It’s, like, potential or something.”

“Wow, independence has done nothing for your sentimentality I see,” Hanamaki says.

Tooru rolls his eyes and then, because they’re on the phone, says, “I just rolled my eyes at you.”

There’s a knock on the doorframe and Tooru tilts his head further back against the floorboards until he can see Iwaizumi upside down and backlit from the kitchen doorway. He holds up an empty mug and mouths _tea?_

“Please,” Tooru says. “Sorry, Makki, Iwa-chan is distracting me. He doesn’t say hello by the way. Rude boy.”

Iwaizumi extends a single finger in Tooru’s direction and turns away again.

“I think he just gave you the finger,” Tooru tells Hanamaki, without bothering to lower his voice.

“I heard that, shithead!” Iwaizumi yells and Tooru grins to himself.

“Tell him you’re having _emotions_ ,” Hanamaki says.

“No! He made fun of me, like, four times today.”

“Good. Put me on speaker.”

“He’s gone, Makki. This bullying opportunity has surpassed you.”

“Mhm,” Hanamaki says and the phone goes very staticky and then very muffled. A few seconds later, Tooru hears Iwaizumi’s phone ping from the kitchen.

“Did you really just text him?” he asks, half-disbelieving even though he expects this from Hanamaki by now.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Oikawa. Our private conversations are none of your business.”

“They’re about me!” Tooru whines.

Hanamaki doesn’t respond. Something clatters against the worktop and there’s the sound of running water and the scrape of steel wool against metal.

“I was only calling to ask about the apartment anyway,” he says, which means he’s finished cooking.

“When do you move back to the dorms?” Tooru asks.

“Soon.” He can’t tell if Hanamaki sounds relieved or annoyed. “Turns out I do not miss living in a tiny townhouse with two younger siblings. But I’ll let you go, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” Tooru agrees. “I’m serious about you and Mattsun visiting.”

“I know. My love to Iwaizumi,” Hanamaki says.

“What about me?” Tooru says. Hanamaki hangs up the phone.

Iwaizumi appears in the main room several seconds later with two steaming mugs in his hands. He sets one down beside Tooru’s hip, far enough that he won’t accidentally knock it when he sits up, and seats himself on the other cushion, facing Tooru instead of the television.

“Hanamaki alright?” he asks. Tooru sniffs and feigns annoyance.

“You would know.”

He watches Iwaizumi out of the corner of his eye—he’s _always_ watching Iwaizumi out of the corner of his eye—so he sees the exasperated frown, which twitches at the corners of Iwaizumi’s lips.

“You’ve been saying stupid things about us living together again,” he says. It’s mostly teasing but there’s a quiet question underneath, an almost-concern laced in his voice.

“It’s not stupid. This is our first home together, Iwa-chan! Why does no one else think that’s a big deal?”

“Stupid,” Iwaizumi says again and stretches out one leg so he can wiggle his toes into the side of Tooru’s stomach. Tooru squirms and pushes his leg away, but he follows it with his hand, keeps his fingers cupped around Iwaizumi’s ankle.

“We should look for a sofa tomorrow,” Iwaizumi says. Tooru watches him and he watches the television as it plays something too quiet to make out even in the silence.

They don’t say anything for a long time and Tooru closes his eyes and taps out a rhythm on the bare skin between Iwaizumi’s sock and the bottom of his joggers.

It’s only because they’re being so quiet and the evening is so still around them that Tooru hears when Iwaizumi repeats, in a small breathless voice, “Our first home.”

#

The thing is, Tooru is in love with Iwaizumi. This is objective, this is fact. The three great truths of the universe: the sun rises in the east, the birds will always come back in the spring, and Tooru loves Iwaizumi in an irreversible, illimitable way. It’s the most consequential part of being IwaizumiandOikawa, of being two names bleeding into one another, two childhoods intertwined. It works because Tooru is in love with Iwaizumi.

It works because Iwaizumi has never realised.

When they were four and five and six, Iwaizumi loved trees with branches that spiralled out like cobwebs, he loved the creek beds in summer when they hollowed out, and he loved plasters that came in bright colours; and Tooru loved the gap at the front of Iwaizumi’s smile.

When they were ten and eleven and twelve, Iwaizumi loved the dog at the end of their street that lolled its head over the garden wall on their way to school, he loved take-home science projects, and he loved films with jumpscares; and Tooru loved the line of scars on the back of Iwaizumi’s hand from climbing through a barbed wire fence.

When they were sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, Iwaizumi loved volleyball in the afternoons, he loved the back of the local library where there was always an empty table, and he loved the sushi place three train stops from their school; and Tooru loved the creases in Iwaizumi’s forehead that looked like frown lines but were more prominent when he laughed.

And now, Tooru watches Iwaizumi out of the corner of his eye and Iwaizumi looks in the other direction.

Tooru has been in love with him for so long that sometimes he forgets that it’s supposed to hurt, that he loves and loves and loves him out of the corner of his eye and it’s the easiest and hardest thing he’s ever done. But it’s the only way he knows how to do it.

So they buy a sofa and, later, a coffee table, a set of plates that actually matches, a cabinet for the television, two desks and two chairs, a flatpack set of shelves which they build in Iwaizumi’s room but fill half of it with Tooru’s books and knickknacks.

So they build a home together, and eat dinner together, and wake in the mornings to bicker over the shower together, and disappear every night into separate rooms. And it’s the easiest and hardest thing Tooru has ever done.

#

University resumes in late spring and the campus café where Tooru worked during their first year reopens the week before classes start. He hadn’t bothered with a holiday job because he was lucky enough not to need one and he’d been busy moving house for at least half of their break, so it feels foreign when he ducks behind the counter on Tuesday morning and dons the apron his co-worker, Sugawara, holds out to him.

It’s a slow morning, since the campus is still waking up from the spring break, so Tooru spends most of it trying to find things to clean. Sugawara doesn’t even put up a pretence of trying to work. He leans up against the deli cabinet and chatters about the week-long wilderness retreat he had coerced two of his friends into accompanying him on.

“How was your break, Oikawa?”

Tooru glances up from the counter he’s currently wiping down.

“Better than yours, if that description is anything to go by,” he says. Sugawara scoffs but he knows Tooru well enough to know it’s a joke. “Iwa-chan and I moved into an apartment.”

Sugawara, who has been fiddling with a sugar packet for the past ten minutes, pauses and stares at Tooru.

“Iwa-chan as in the one who comes by after your shift?”

“How many Iwa-chans do you think I know?”

Sugawara shakes his head and ignores Tooru. “You guys are living together? Like, _together_? As in…?”

It hurts a little, the way he says _together_ like what Tooru and Iwaizumi have is worth anything less, but Tooru laughs as if he’s in on the joke.

“ _Together_ as in he’s my best friend,” he says.

“Whom you’re in love with.”

Tooru likes Sugawara for the most part. He’s funny and kind and confident, but he’s also annoyingly perceptive and honest to a fault. It’s a trait that Tooru likes when they’re gossiping about others, less so when it’s turned on himself.

“No one said I was in love with him,” he says, though he knows it doesn’t matter.

“No one had to,” Sugawara says. It _hurts_.

“We’re just friends,” Tooru says, half because he doesn’t want Sugawara getting the wrong idea and half because he thinks he, himself, could do with the reminder.

When he looks over, Sugawara has set the sugar packet to one side and is giving Tooru such a tender smile, almost like he feels bad for him. Tooru doesn’t need that. He loves Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi loves him back, albeit in his own way, and that’s enough. That’s all there is.

He’s grateful when a harried student shows up at that point, before Sugawara can spill any of the sympathy Tooru can see brimming on his tongue.

“I’ve got to speak to my PhD tutor this morning and he’s always got students camped out down the corridor to meet with him. I need the caffeine if I’m about to battle it out with a bunch of first and second years,” she tells Tooru as he taps her coffee order into the register.

Tooru grins at her. “No worries. Suga’s on it and his lattes are the only thing that kept me alive last year.”

Sugawara leans out from behind the coffee grinder to offer her an extra shot on the house, which she graciously accepts. While Sugawara is distracted, Tooru busies himself restocking the brownie display in their deli cabinet.

He resolutely doesn’t think too hard about Sugawara’s accusation. It’s not exactly surprising—he already knew Sugawara was observant and perceptive—but he’s not sure it will ever stop being foreign to hear it admitted out loud. Tooru has been in love with Iwaizumi since he can remember and probably everyone knows it by looking at him, but no one’s ever actually _said_ as much other than Hanamaki and he, at least, is in a similar boat and therefore has no grounds upon which to make fun of Tooru. It’s not as if Sugawara is even the type to make light of it, but Tooru is wary all the same.

“Hey, Oikawa,” Sugawara starts to say after the customer has hurried off in the direction of her PhD tutor’s office. Tooru snaps the deli cabinet shut with a little more force than necessary.

“Tell me more about this wilderness retreat.”

Sugawara pauses and watches Tooru for several painstaking seconds, then says, “Yeah, I didn’t even get to the part where Asahi stepped in an ant nest by mistake.”

Tooru _does_ like Sugawara for the most part, and he remembers why. Because he’s funny and kind and confident and when he meets with a stone-cold wall, he never ever pushes. Instead, they talk about Sugawara’s friends and Tooru’s hometown and the upcoming semester until Shimizu turns up to take Tooru’s place, while Sugawara works a double shift.

Iwaizumi does, in fact, swing by to pick Tooru up, despite the fact that term hasn’t technically started yet and they have no reason to spend their free time together in the library as they usually do. Tooru is digging his stuff out the staff cupboard when Iwaizumi gets there, so it’s Sugawara who leans over the counter to greet him.

“Oh, if it isn’t our Iwa-chan,” he says.

Tooru whips around at that, narrowly avoiding slamming his fingers in the cupboard door. Iwaizumi is standing a metre from the counter, his arms folded across his chest, and frowning at Sugawara.

“Don’t call me that, please,” he says. “I’d prefer Iwaizumi.”

Sugawara blinks in surprise and Tooru feels a little bad for not warning him in advance, but the guilt is smothered by a smugness at Iwaizumi’s insistence that _no one else_ use Tooru’s nickname for him.

“Sorry,” Sugawara says eventually. “It’s just Oikawa…Well, anyway, it’s nice to meet you properly. Oikawa talks about you a lot.”

Iwaizumi’s gaze flickers briefly to Tooru, still pressed up against the cupboard. Tooru grins and raises a hand, wiggling his fingers.

“Hey, Iwa-chan. I wasn’t expecting you.”

Iwaizumi ignores him in favour of saying, “Sugawara, I presume? He talks about you too.”

That, at least, makes Sugawara smile.

“Please, just Suga is fine.”

Tooru shoulders his tote bag, lifts part of the counter and ducks underneath, popping back up at Iwaizumi’s side. He beams at him again and Iwaizumi bumps their elbows in greeting. Tooru leans into him, subconsciously at first, but once he realises he’s doing it he lifts his hand to press his fingertips into Iwaizumi’s shoulder and rests his chin on top of his hand for a second. Iwaizumi smiles with the half of his mouth that is facing Tooru.

“It was nice meeting you, Suga,” he says, dislodging Tooru from his shoulder when he bows.

“See you!” Tooru calls and then tugs Iwaizumi backwards by the elbow.

“So, what are we doing, Iwa-chan?” he asks as they exit the automatic doors of the university hub. Iwaizumi shrugs and stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, squeezing his elbows into his sides. There’s a sharp wind in the air, despite the month teetering on the edge of summer, and Tooru wishes forlornly that he’d thought to bring a jacket.

“Dunno,” Iwaizumi says. “Felt weird being in the quiet apartment without you so I thought we’d get lunch or something.”

Tooru laughs. “Aw, you were all lonely! When did you get so co-dependent?”

“Fuck off,” Iwaizumi says, shoving his shoulder against Tooru, then adds, “We always have been, dumbass.”

Tooru can’t argue with that and, admittedly, doesn’t want to. It’s nice to hear Iwaizumi say it though, to remember that he needs Tooru as much as Tooru needs him. Whether or not it’s in the same way, it’s been enough to keep him at Tooru’s side all these years.

“Okay, lunch.” Tooru claps his hands. “Our favourite?”

Iwaizumi doesn’t respond but as they leave the campus grounds, he turns left in the direction of their usual udon restaurant. They walk mostly in silence, which is sort of funny since silence was the reason Iwaizumi had left the apartment in the first place, but Tooru knows that it’s a different kind of quiet. One that’s less empty.

He hums as they walk, not because he feels the need to fill the space between them, but because it’s a habit that peers out whenever he’s alone or with Iwaizumi. Once, when they were ten or twelve and Iwaizumi had still been afraid of the dark, they had stayed out too late at the creek down behind their houses. Tooru held Iwaizumi’s hand and hummed thoughtlessly the whole way home and Iwaizumi’s death grip had loosened a little with each note. So, it’s a _thing_.

It’s still early by the time they arrive at the restaurant, just grazing midday, so they manage to snag a table by the window and Iwaizumi wanders to the counter to place their order while Tooru minds their place.

He’s fiddling with a napkin, folding it back and forth on itself in an accordion pattern, when Hanamaki texts him, _on the train w matsu n hes wearing my fuckin shirt so blessd so moved <3_

Tooru laughs as he picks up his phone, but he gets it because sometimes Iwaizumi will nick his jumpers if he’s too lazy to dig out one of his own and Tooru’s traitorous heart goes rampant every time. He texts back _why??? & gl haha._

Hanamaki sends him three crying emojis and a prayer hands and says, _i think he thinks its his lol im not saying a thing._ Tooru really gets it.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, kicking the leg of Tooru’s chair on his way past and rounding the table to sit across from him. Tooru switches off his phone and slides it back into his pocket.

“I just remembered we need toothpaste,” Iwaizumi continues.

Tooru hums and says, “We can pick some up on the way home. I need to grab painkillers anyway.”

“No, I got some yesterday.” Iwaizumi shrugs when Tooru opens his mouth. “I saw you were out.”

Tooru doesn’t say anything to that. It’s so like Iwaizumi to notice without saying a word, to help without having to be asked. He thinks about Iwaizumi keeping hold of Tooru’s phone so he wouldn’t lose it, thinks about Iwaizumi still using the Godzilla mug Tooru gave him when they were kids all these years later, thinks about Iwaizumi showing up after his shift just because he wanted to see him. He thinks about the way Sugawara had said _together_ like it was something sacred, like the word needed to be cradled close to his chest.

_It hurts._

#

Tooru does not like university. He would even go as far as to say he almost cannot stand it. The shock of this knowledge, which had been so earth-shattering in his first year, has worn off. So he doesn’t like university. So he goes anyway.

In theory, he likes all of his classes. He gets on with his tutors and he finds his readings interesting and he _loves_ taking notes in his lectures. He couldn’t have picked a major more suited to him or classes that he finds more engaging. But the problem is he still does not like university.

He doesn’t really tell anyone because it doesn’t really matter because he’ll keep going anyway, stubborn to a fault and never (not even a little bit) a quitter. Iwaizumi knows because Iwaizumi always knows and because he sat front row at Tooru’s realisation and subsequent breakdown during first year. But when Tooru reapplied in spring, Iwaizumi didn’t bat an eyelid, so they don’t talk about it.

It’s like this: during the school term, Tooru is miserable. He is studying his dream degree and is therefore the happiest he could possibly be at university, but he is still, admittedly, miserable. When his classes postpone over the breaks, he dreams about never going back. He thinks, _there are more options than this. There has to be._ But when he digs a little deeper, when he scratches just below the surface of his desire to be anywhere other than tertiary education, he finds that the whole thing fills with holes and cracks in two. He doesn’t have a backup plan because he assumed he didn’t need one, and when he really thinks about it all he sees is an endless stream of days spent lying on the carpeted floor of his mother’s house and waiting for Iwaizumi to come home. Besides, Iwaizumi is at university, so Tooru goes anyway.

It’s not that he thinks their relationship hinges on their proximity. They would still be IwaizumiandOikawa whether Tooru is at university or not. They would still live together, even, because it wouldn’t occur to Tooru to move back to Miyagi alone. It’s just that he’s spent his whole life fighting tooth and nail to defend his spot at Iwaizumi’s side, and if Iwaizumi is at university then Tooru will follow him there even if it kills him. He doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do.

The first week of each term is always the best. Tooru likes being on campus; he likes his and Iwaizumi’s favourite table in the library; he likes catching the bus home after late classes, when it’s too dark and chilly to walk. During the first week, there is always so much potential and Tooru likes _that_ more than anything.

But, still, there is the constant, looming wave of nausea that Tooru catches sometimes when he glances over his shoulder. In the second week of classes, white horses break over Tooru’s head.

He bids Iwaizumi goodnight from across the hall, because they are nothing if not creatures of habit, and climbs onto his bed, but he’s still sat cross-legged atop the covers three hours later. It’s not like he’s even doing anything this time. Tooru knows sleeplessness intimately; he’s grown used to hours passing between one blink and the next while he grips his phone or a notepad or the TV remote.

This brand of insomnia—the kind where he picks at a loose thread in his duvet and stares at the wall until two in the morning—is less common. When Tooru blinks his vision back into focus, he doesn’t immediately realise what time it is. His back is cramping from hunching over his lap and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth when he swallows, so he gets up and cracks open his door.

Outside of his bedroom, it’s evident the night is creeping into the small hours of the morning. At eleven pm, the apartment is cosy and welcoming as it beckons Tooru to bed, still buzzing with whispers and green tea and late-night television. At two am, the eeriness has settled in and Tooru shivers as he tiptoes past Iwaizumi’s door towards the kitchen.

They are in the lull between spring and summer, and the Tokyo nights are warm and humid already, but Tooru can make out goosebumps riddling his arms in the wan light from the kitchen window.

He pours himself a glass of water and slips into the living room, rather than braving the walk back down the corridor. He can’t quite remember what’s been keeping him awake for three hours but he doesn’t feel like sitting listless in his room all night. He picks up his discarded laptop from the coffee table instead and settles onto his usual end of the sofa—the same one he and Iwaizumi had picked out together not even a month prior.

He barely has any work for his classes yet, it being only the second week, but if Tooru were to use one word to describe himself, it would probably be overachiever. So he works through his assessment plans, over-preparing for classes that don’t _require_ preparation in the first place, and once he’s done everything he can feasibly do at this point in the semester, he makes up assignments to distract himself.

It works, for a while. His anxiety fades into the back of his subconscious, making space for him to focus on something (anything) else. It works so well that he doesn’t notice Iwaizumi frowning from the doorway until it’s too late.

“Oi, arseface,” Iwaizumi says seconds before the pillow from his bed slams into the back of Tooru’s head.

“Hey! What was that for?” Tooru brings up a hand to rub the offending spot, twisting on the sofa to peer at Iwaizumi. He’s caught in a shaft of light from the kitchen doorway, the bare skin of his torso half-silvery in the moonlight. Tooru lets out a sigh without quite meaning to.

“You fucking know. Don’t act all stupid; it’s not a good look for you.”

Tooru suppresses a smile. There’s a compliment somewhere in there, packed between Iwaizumi’s brand of loving insult. He curls his toes into the sofa cushion, leans his cheek against the crook of his elbow on the back of the sofa, and fondly watches Iwaizumi glare at him from the hallway.

“So mean, Iwa-chan. It’s always brute force with you,” he says, words coming out mushy from behind his arm.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, bends forwards to pick up his pillow, and mutters, “Can’t teach a dog to stand on its hind legs.”

“You _can_ actually,” Tooru says around a gasp. “I saw this video once…”

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says, his voice dropping dangerously low, “bed. Now. I swear to everything.”

Tooru sighs, shutting the lid of his laptop and sliding it onto the coffee table. He makes no move to get up though. He knows exactly what is waiting for him in his bedroom.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, which is obvious really, but he knows Iwaizumi gets what he means when he lets out a slow breath through his nose.

He rounds the end of the sofa, drops his pillow by Tooru’s feet, and then shoves at Tooru’s legs until he makes enough space for Iwaizumi to sit down as well. He picks up whatever book he had been reading before bed and had abandoned on the arm of the sofa.

“Come on,” he says, beckoning to Tooru.

When Tooru doesn’t immediately move, Iwaizumi leans over to grab his wrist and tug him forwards. Tooru gets the hint. He swivels on the sofa, so his back is to Iwaizumi, and leans backwards until his head is in Iwaizumi’s lap. He wriggles around until he finds a position where his skull isn’t digging against Iwaizumi’s thighbone. Once he’s comfortable, Iwaizumi pushes his fringe back from his forehead and studies Tooru for a few brief seconds. Tooru blinks slowly back at him.

Satisfied, Iwaizumi lets Tooru’s hair flop out of his grasp and returns to the book in his hands. He opens it to the first page, despite having been over halfway through it the evening before, and rests his other arm across Tooru’s chest. Tooru likes the weight of it, the way it makes him feel enclosed by Iwaizumi on either side. He imagines another life in which he takes Iwaizumi’s hand like this, holds on tight, and doesn’t let go. He could do it, probably. It wouldn’t even be that weird, really, because physical intimacy is natural to them after growing up in one another’s pockets. But there are _lines_. It works because there are lines and Tooru does not cross them.

Iwaizumi starts reading, his quiet voice slowly breathing the cosiness back into the apartment. Tooru closes his eyes to listen and fiddles absentmindedly with the leather bracelet on Iwaizumi’s wrist. It isn’t the same as sliding their palms together and locking their fingers, but it’s enough. It’s all there is.

The anxiety in the back of his mind dissipates.

#

In May, Tooru’s therapist returns from her honeymoon. He sort of missed her in a strange, absent way: not the gaping abscess of missing he felt when Iwaizumi’s family spent the summer in Hokkaido one year in high school, but still a quiet twinge when he checked the calendar and saw his upcoming appointment dates scratched out.

He’s always hated waiting rooms, particularly the one outside his therapist’s office because he feels cut open and raw for all the other patients to see, but walking up to the front desk after a month away fills him with an unexpected sense of calm.

 _Routine,_ he thinks, as he settles comfortably into his usual chair. He has missed this.

He’s early but Matsuoka has an empty slot before his, so he doesn’t have to wait long for her to beckon him into her room. Once they’re settled on opposite sides of her low glass table, Tooru gestures emphatically towards her hand before she can ask him how he’s been.

Matsuoka smiles and obliges, holding her left hand out for Tooru to gawk at her ring. He does so without an ounce of sarcasm because her wedding band really is a wonderful complement to the engagement ring.

“How’s your wife? How was Venice?” he asks.

“Both beautiful,” Matsuoka says. Her smile is contagious and Tooru leans back in his armchair, grinning widely.

“And how was your month? What did you do with all your free time?” she continues.

Tooru scoffs. “ _What_ free time? I’m back at university.”

Matsuoka raises her eyebrows at that, but Tooru has been seeing her long enough that she knows to give him a moment before she presses further.

“Well, I still have a lot of time. But I don’t really know what happens to it…? I just think about how much university sucks.”

Matsuoka nods. They have had this conversation before.

“Because it eats into your time?” she asks.

Tooru shakes his head and says, “I wish it took up more time. Then I wouldn’t have to spend so long thinking about how much it sucks.”

“What are you doing to keep busy outside of classes? You would have started work again.”

“Yeah,” Tooru says. “And Iwa-chan and I are still buying stuff for our apartment.”

“Oh, the apartment!” Matsuoka taps her pen enthusiastically against her notepad. “How is it?”

Tooru can, at least, give her a genuine smile at that.

“The best,” he says. The same sense of calm settles over him once more. “I think I forgot what personal space was like.”

“But you’re still sharing that space with Iwaizumi. Does that worry you?”

“Iwa-chan doesn’t count. His space _is_ my space.” Tooru shrugs.

“So, Iwaizumi’s good, the apartment’s good, work’s good,” she pauses here until Tooru nods confirmation, “and university is a bit of a challenge, but we knew it would be.”

They did know. Matsuoka had talked through a hundred different scenarios with Tooru in which he didn’t reapply for his second year but, in the end, Tooru did what he always did when he felt lost. He followed Iwaizumi’s footprints.

“Before my break, we were talking about ways to manage insomnia. Have you given any of them a shot?” she asks.

“I guess. The winding down thing, anyway. It’s just, like, sometimes I don’t even realise I’m still awake until I’ve already stayed up the whole night, you know?”

Matsuoka nods. It’s probably her job to know.

“Iwa-chan reads to me or lies down with me and plays music if he gets up. It helps a bit. Even if I don’t sleep, I feel less tired in the morning.”

“That’s the right sort of thing to do. Letting your body relax and your brain switch off for a bit, even if you’re not sleeping, will help you recover from fatigue,” Matsuoka says. “Have you thought about listening to an audiobook before bed instead of waiting for Iwaizumi?”

“Sort of. It doesn’t really do the same thing.” Tooru bites the inside of his cheek, aware of how transparent he’s being. But, well. It’s not like lying to his therapist will get him anywhere. “I think I mostly just like him being there.

To her credit, Matsuoka doesn’t even blink.

“That makes sense,” she says. “He’s obviously someone you associate with comfort and safety. On top of that, sometimes it’s just easier to relax when you’re not alone.”

“When we were in high school,” Tooru says because he’s on a roll now, “I used to call him in the middle of the night sometimes. He wouldn’t even say anything, because he’d fall asleep again right away. I mean, sometimes I think he was picking up the calls in his sleep. But it was nice when I could hear him just… _being_ there. I liked making myself breathe at the same time as him.”

“How would you feel about calling him now when you can’t sleep? Or even going to his room? Reaching out to him might be even easier now that you’re living together.”

Tooru crinkles his nose. It’s an obvious solution, really, and Iwaizumi probably wouldn’t mind it. Knowing him, he’d encourage it. Cutting out the middleman, saving him the trouble of having to get up. Those would be very Iwaizumi-like things to say.

The problem isn’t Iwaizumi. The problem isn’t actually his insomnia either, because Tooru is so used to managing it by now that it barely registers. The problem is that Tooru worries he has grown too comfortable. It _would_ be easy to reach out Iwaizumi, even easier than when they were kids. It would be easy to lean on him for the rest of their lives. It would be easy to live forever in their Tokyo apartment, or in whichever part of the country Iwaizumi set his sights on next, Tooru following like a child at his heel. It hurts, the familiarity of it, it _aches_. Tooru knows that he could lean on Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi would carry him because that’s what he does, but Tooru wonders, sometimes, if that would always be enough.

He doesn’t tell Matsuoka this. She is his therapist but there is no amount of cognitive behavioural techniques that will stop his body from orbiting Iwaizumi’s. There’s nothing in the world that could do that.

#

Iwaizumi has to pick up a book from the library on Saturday and he drags Tooru along with him, despite the fact that it’s _Saturday_ and campus is the _last_ place Tooru wants to be. He whines the whole walk there but he runs out of complaints by the time they reach the library, and they end up settling in at their usual table without discussion.

Seated across from Iwaizumi is Tooru’s favourite way to study. They’re so used to being quiet together that Tooru can focus better than he does alone. Iwaizumi always studies with one bud in his ear; like Tooru, he prefers physical notes to digital ones; and he highlights so much of his textbooks it’s a wonder he can find anything at all amongst the coloured mess. Tooru, who feels like half of Iwaizumi’s brain most of the time, has never been able to decode his colour system.

They fall quickly into their groove, their notes and stationery spilling out and bleeding into one another but they’ve always been good at working around the other. (Tooru picks up a stapled booklet on canine physiology to find his sticky notes and thinks about how easily their tabletop resembles two names inked on a small piece of card.)

Tooru is so caught up in his own work that he startles in surprise when the spare seat beside Iwaizumi scrapes across the floor. He looks up to see Kuroo, who used to live on the same floor as them in the dorms, inviting himself to their study session.

Iwaizumi glances up only briefly, enough to knock his fist against Kuroo’s, before returning to something he’s scribbling in the margins of an already bursting page of notes.

“Third floor reunion, is it?” Kuroo says, grinning at Tooru. Iwaizumi ignores him and Tooru wishes he possessed the same patience.

“Oh, tell me you didn’t invite Teradomari,” he says, because he’s not in the mood. He’s really not.

Kuroo laughs. “Tera’s alright, you know?”

Tooru shrugs and reshuffles the pages of the storyboard he’s working on so he can reread it from the start. It’s quiet again, but Kuroo’s presence is constantly niggling at the edge of Tooru’s vision. His brain won’t let him relax the same way it does with Iwaizumi.

“Hey, Iwa-chan, did you understand that bit in our biomechanics lecture yesterday?” Kuroo interrupts eventually, leaning in to peer into Iwaizumi’s face. He hooks a finger around the string of Iwaizumi’s earbud and tugs it out of his ear. Tooru accidentally tears the corner of the page he’s reading.

“Don’t call me that,” Iwaizumi says. “Which bit?”

“ _He_ calls you that all the time though.”

Kuroo jerks a thumb at Tooru, and he pretends to be too interested in a note he’s stuck over one panel to notice.

“So what?” Out of the corner of his eye, Tooru catches Iwaizumi’s shrug. “Which bit did you need help with?”

Tooru lifts his stack of paper a couple of inches and covers his smile under the guise of leaning in to examine an illustration. Over the top of the page, he catches Kuroo’s eyeroll, but he doesn’t push it any further.

“The bit about orthopaedic balance. I zoned out and I feel like Washijou is the type to put that on the exam,” Kuroo says and Iwaizumi flips back a few pages in his notebook to find what he’s talking about.

Tooru stops listening after that. He reaches across the table to steal Iwaizumi’s abandoned earbuds and hits play on whatever playlist Iwaizumi had open on his laptop. Kuroo barely glances at him when the movement distracts him, and Iwaizumi doesn’t even look up.

Tooru bends over his storyboard again and smiles when he recognises the song as one he’d begged Iwaizumi to listen to during a fleeting obsession and promptly forgotten about within a week. He hasn’t listened to it since then but Iwaizumi, clearly, had remembered.

#

On May 28th Hanamaki texts him a screenshot of what is clearly a video of Matsukawa playing a guitar cover, followed up by a zoomed in screenshot of the sliver of skin where his jeans have ridden up slightly above his ankle.

Tooru tells him to get over it, then immediately sends a barrage of awful selfies Iwaizumi took on his phone two days prior, including one of Tooru perched on the kitchen counter in which Iwaizumi is pretending to squish his head, because _his NAILS makki purple looks so good on him_.

He switches off his phone and goes to class after that and Hanamaki leaves him no less than sixteen voice messages with varying degrees of clarity, all of which seem to be about a V-neck jumper Matsukawa had bought.

#

Tooru wakes abruptly one night with the distinct sensation that something is _wrong_. It must be late still, because his room is pitch black and his blinds usually let in more light than they keep out. He doesn’t fully realise what has woken him until he feels the mattress dip beside him.

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything as he pries back the covers enough to slip underneath. Tooru rolls properly onto his side so he can try to make out the line of Iwaizumi’s face in the dark.

“Iwa-chan?” he asks softly. When he doesn’t get a response, he reaches out to trace the vague shape of Iwaizumi’s jaw. He can feel the tension beneath his fingertips.

“You had a bad dream,” he says. It isn’t a question because he doesn’t have to ask. He knows the signs.

“Mm,” Iwaizumi agrees and Tooru can hear the slight shake even in the single syllable.

Iwaizumi reaches out blindly and presses his fingers into Tooru’s chest. He latches onto the thin material of his shirt and twists it up in his fist. Instinctively, Tooru raises his own hand and cups it over Iwaizumi’s, holding him steady in place.

Iwaizumi hasn’t crawled into his bed, begging silently for comfort, like this since before high school, but the scene is all too familiar to Tooru. He grips tight to Iwaizumi’s hand and traces the fingertips of his other around Iwaizumi’s jaw and into his hair, tugging lightly.

“Safe,” he says and Iwaizumi whines. He never likes talking about his nightmares after they happen—in all of sixteen years, Tooru has never actually been given more than a vague summary. But he knows, for all of Iwaizumi’s reprimands, he is even less likely to ask for help than Tooru is, and when he does it’s only ever in silence and only when it’s bad enough that Tooru would never dream of pushing.

Instead, he starts humming. It starts out as a pop song he heard in a supermarket the week before, but he quickly forgets the melody and it devolves into something made up and instinctive. Iwaizumi shifts, dislodging Tooru’s hand from his hair, and presses his forehead against Tooru’s chest, above their clasped hands. Tooru knows he’s searching for the vibrations, letting Tooru’s quiet hum fill his head and drown everything else out.

It takes a long time and Tooru has mashed together at least twenty different songs before he feels Iwaizumi’s body relaxing. He lets his humming fade out once he’s sure Iwaizumi has fallen asleep, but Tooru stays awake for hours after that.

In the morning, Iwaizumi is still pressed mostly against his front, but Tooru can tell he’s already awake from the way he’s smoothing absently over the creases his fingers left in Tooru’s shirt.

“Want to talk about it?” Tooru asks, like he always asks the morning after.

Iwaizumi freezes and tilts his head to look up at Tooru, not having realised he was awake. As expected, he rolls onto his back, away from Tooru’s chest, and fakes a smile.

“Not really,” he says. “The usual. People dying. It seems silly now.”

He waves it off and eventually gets up. Tooru watches him tiptoe out of the room and thinks about how his best friend has been dreaming about _people dying_ since they were five years old and feels more helpless than he ever has.

Logically, he knows he can’t fix this. But he also knows Iwaizumi and it’s been sixteen years and Tooru _still_ can’t figure it out.

#

“What’s up?” Hanamaki says when he answers the phone. Tooru, on the sofa in the otherwise empty apartment, nestles a cushion between his chest and his knees and curls tightly around it.

“Makki,” he says and glances over his shoulder, even though he knows Iwaizumi is in lectures until five today. It’s only two. “You know how you’re hopelessly in love with Mattsun?”

“Mmh.” Hanamaki’s reply is muffled and strangely distant. Tooru frowns.

“Are you okay?”

“Peachy. What did you want, Oikawa? And you’re on speaker so don’t say anything embarrassing.”

“I’m on speaker?” Tooru straightens up, his grip on the phone tightening. “Who with?”

“’Sei,” Hanamaki says, mostly muffled again.

“Hey, Oikawa, tell me more about Takahiro being in love with me,” Matsukawa says then. There’s the sounds of a half-hearted scuffle, a thump, and a quiet gasp.

“He _hit_ me!” Matsukawa says. “I was trying to be loving and he hit me. Oikawa, is this how you feel every day?”

“Wait, what?” Tooru says because he feels like he’s missing half the story. “Mattsun, you _know_?”

“That you’re in love with Iwaizumi? I thought everyone knew.”

“What?” Tooru says again. He can hear them shuffle around in the background and then Hanamaki’s voice comes through clearer.

“He’s got eyes, Oikawa. Also, we’re dating now. Surprise.”

“We’re dating?” Matsukawa says. “That’s very forward of you. I don’t remember being asked.”

“I don’t remember you complaining when I kissed you,” Hanamaki says and Tooru truly doesn’t know how this phone call has spiralled so far out of his control.

“Wait, _what_?” he repeats.

“So I was in a bad mood and Issei was like ‘hey, I’m not doing anything, I’ll come cheer you up’ and I was like ‘what no you live like two hours away and you have class’ and then he shows up on my doorstep with, like, five kilograms of chocolate because he’s a huge romantic—ow, don’t pinch me, you _are_ —and I was like, okay, this man just skipped class and drove two hours across the city on a Tuesday evening to bring me a barbaric amount of chocolate because I said I was maybe a little bit sad; I guess I have to tell him. So I told him and now we’re dating.”

“What?” Tooru says once more, for good measure. “So…he knows? You’re dating?”

“That’s what I just said, yes.” There’s silence on the line for a few seconds before Hanamaki says, slightly apologetic, “I was going to tell you.”

Tooru hums disbelievingly and then feels guilty, because this isn’t really about him.

“Don’t apologise,” he says. “It’s not my business.”

Hanamaki and Matsukawa are hardly a stand-in for Iwaizumi. Tooru loves them but they’re only really friends because they happened to go to school together. They have their own thing anyway and Tooru likes that his relationship with Iwaizumi is different, even within their group of four. But, still. They’re his friends and he texts Hanamaki every day. Had he worked up the courage to kiss Iwaizumi, he thinks Hanamaki might be the first person he called.

“No really, Oikawa, I was going to tell you,” Hanamaki says, like he can read Tooru’s thoughts. “We haven’t told anyone yet because it’s been one day and all we’ve done is lie on the floor.”

“I’m on the floor,” Matsukawa clarifies. “All Takahiro has done is lie on top of me.”

“Well, I’m allowed to now. I’m making up for lost time.”

“You used to sit in his lap at lunch. What’s there to make up for?” Tooru says, which makes Matsukawa laugh.

“Whatever, dickhead,” Hanamaki says, but Tooru can hear the smile even from this far away. “Anyway, did you need something?”

“Oh, no, nope, absolutely not, no details for you. You’re in a relationship now, Makki, you can’t relate anymore.”

“You know that’s not how this works, right? You can still talk to me.”

“You can talk to _us_ ,” Matsukawa adds.

There’s a noise like Hanamaki hits him again and says, “You were never a part of this.”

“I could have been!” Matsukawa says. “What is this, the being in love with your best friend club? You guys could have invited me to your whine and pine!”

Tooru can’t make out what’s happening next. There’s a lot of scuffling, several thuds, and what sounds like running footsteps, then Hanamaki yelling, “Don’t say the phrase ‘whine and pine’ and expect me to keep loving you!” and then a door slamming.

“Okay, well, that got rid of him for a few minutes,” Hanamaki says around a heavy breath. “What’s up, Oikawa?”

Tooru laughs. “Go spend time with your boyfriend, idiot.”

“Seriously, what is it? You sounded like you were about to cry when you called.”

“Really, go,” Tooru says. “It’s not important. I’ll tell you later. You probably only have Mattsun for another day or two.”

Hanamaki hums like he doesn’t really believe Tooru but he also sees the merit in spending the next few hours with his boyfriend.

“Makki,” Tooru says quietly when Hanamaki doesn’t offer any other response. “I really am happy for you. For you both.”

“Yeah,” Hanamaki breathes, “me too. I do mean it. We can still talk about this.”

“I know. I’ll give your love to Iwa-chan, right?”

He hears the huff of laughter Hanamaki tries to muffle.

“And to you,” Hanamaki says and hangs up.

#

“Okay, so you’ve been in love with him for…how long?” Sugawara asks at their joint morning shift on Friday. He’s midway through testing the extraction on the coffee machine and Tooru is supposed to be making paninis, but the conversation at hand is a little distracting.

Tooru can’t help the laugh that fizzles out of his chest, humourless and self-deprecating, at Sugawara’s question. He turns his hands palm-up on the chopping board in front of him and studies the creases of them, traces the heart line running steadily, constantly through everything.

“As long as I’ve known what love is. Longer, probably,” he says.

Sugawara sighs gently. “And you haven’t told him?”

“What, that I love him? I tell him every day.”

They lapse back into silence. The coffee machine hisses as Sugawara pours a shot, and Tooru folds ham into the paninis.

“Does he hear you?” Sugawara asks, a few minutes later.

It’s the same question that flits, uninvited, through Tooru’s head in quiet moments: sometimes late at night when he’s staring at the ceiling and pretending he can hear Iwaizumi’s breaths from across the hall; sometimes in the mornings when he gets up and finds a still warm pot of coffee that Iwaizumi has left out for him; sometimes during afternoon study sessions when Iwaizumi kicks his toes lightly against Tooru’s ankle underneath the table.

Of course, Iwaizumi knows. Tooru doesn’t have to say he loves him because it’s there all the time. Every morning he wakes up and he chooses Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi chooses him and they’ve been making the same choice for _sixteen years_. It couldn’t not be love.

But sometimes, Tooru wonders if Iwaizumi hears the other, quieter confessions—the ones that say _this is enough and this is all there is but I would give you all of me, in whatever way you’ll have me, every day for the rest of my life_. He chooses Iwaizumi, always, and he wonders if Iwaizumi just chooses not to listen.

He doesn’t have an answer for Sugawara’s question, so he gives him a different one instead.

“He slept in my bed last week. And it’s not weird—we’re always like that—but he hasn’t…he used to get nightmares at sleepovers when we were kids and he would get into my bed or onto my futon until he could fall asleep again. But we were so young then. He hasn’t done that in _years_. I didn’t even know he was still having them.”

It’s raw and far too personal for an open café this early in the morning, for a co-worker who really only knows Tooru at a surface level. He looks over his shoulder and finds Sugawara caught, halfway to banging the coffee grounds out of the group handle, frozen and staring at Tooru.

He clears his throat and says, “And you feel bad for not knowing?”

Tooru sets down the panini he’s holding open and clutches the counter instead, closing his burning eyes. Because that’s the crux of the matter. Because Tooru loves Iwaizumi (irreversibly, illimitably) and because he doesn’t know what good it’s ever done for either of them.

“He’s always there for me, Suga,” Tooru whispers. “He carries everything for me. And I don’t know if he thinks I won’t do the same for him.”

Sugawara puts down the group handle and steps forwards, grabbing hold of Tooru’s shoulders and turning him to face him.

“He _knows_ , Oikawa. He came to you, didn’t he? It isn’t easy to ask for help, but he _knew_ you would be there.”

There is a funny moment where Tooru notices the tears on his cheeks at the same moment as one drips off the end of his chin onto the back of Sugawara’s hand and Tooru thinks _oh, that was me_. And then Sugawara is pulling him in and holding him tight.

The café is open and it’s early but not _that_ early and truly anyone could walk up to the counter at any moment, but Tooru lets himself be held. He doesn’t know what else he would even be capable of doing.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” he says into Sugawara’s shoulder, because it’s the truth. “I’m okay. We’re okay. He’s… there’s nothing wrong.”

“I know,” Sugawara says. “You love him.”

He pushes Tooru back gently, squeezes his shoulder, and turns back to the coffee machine. Tooru presses the knuckle of his index finger underneath his eye, willing the tears to recede. It sounds so simple. _You love him._ Objective, fact, truth. He knows it; probably everyone knows it.

“I love him,” he agrees in a quiet voice, because he does. He does, he does, it hurts.

#

Tooru’s favourite mornings are the ones when he doesn’t work and neither of them have classes until the afternoon. Most days, they miss one another by a sliver: Tooru waking up to a text from Iwaizumi about the extra croissant he left out, or Iwaizumi opening his bedroom door just as Tooru closes the front one. But on mornings when they are both granted the permission to be a little lazier Tooru likes breakfast at the kitchen counter, both of them in their pyjamas, Iwaizumi’s bare toes, wrestling each other down the hall for the shower, the way Iwaizumi stretches his back just after he gets up, the fact that Tooru is allowed to watch.

On Sunday, he gets up after Iwaizumi but only just. Iwaizumi is barefoot, pyjama-clad and leaning against the countertop by the sink, cradling a mug in both hands.

“Finally, he rises,” he says when Tooru walks in.

Tooru glances at the steam still rising from the coffee pot by Iwaizumi’s elbow and rolls his eyes.

“Sorry, you’ve been waiting, what, five minutes? And they say _I’m_ the dramatic one,” he says. Iwaizumi laughs, soft and bright.

Tooru loves Iwaizumi in the mornings because he’s always malleable, smudged around the edges. When he’s still warm from the remaining dredges of sleep, he laughs easier, speaks slower, and reaches for Tooru constantly, like he’s relearning the shape of everything.

“How did you sleep?” Iwaizumi asks instead of reciprocating the sarcasm. And Tooru loves their repartee, knows the comfort of it better than anything, but Iwaizumi surprises him in the mornings. Before he has finished waking up, before he rediscovers the way he fits into the world, he is something new and pliable for Tooru’s hands only.

“Superbly. I’m so refreshed after my full ten hours,” Tooru says and makes a _perfect_ sign with his fingers. Iwaizumi laughs again and that’s the second time within a minute. Today is being good to Tooru.

“I was just going to say don’t lie to me but, hey, can’t teach a fish to breathe out of water.”

Tooru grins. “You’ve been updating your metaphors.”

“Yeah, well, someone kept bugging me about it,” Iwaizumi says.

“Just looking out for you, Iwa-chan.” Tooru digs his fingers into Iwaizumi’s side on the way to the fridge, just to be annoying. “If I don’t do it, no one else will.”

He picks through their bunch of bananas until he finds one that’s mostly yellow, blackened only in a few spots at one end. They’ll have to get more because there’s no way Iwaizumi will eat the bruised ones, which means Tooru may as well bake banana bread this afternoon.

“Oh, _you’re_ looking out for _me_ now, are you?” Iwaizumi says when Tooru turns around, but there’s no real bite to it. Of course Tooru’s looking out for him. Of course he has been for sixteen years.

 _I love you. I am in love with you. I have been for sixteen years_ , Tooru thinks.

He breaks the bruised end off the banana and pops it in his mouth, handing the rest to Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi pours him a fresh cup of coffee. Tooru leans up against the counter at Iwaizumi’s side and the sun peeks in through the window behind them, warming their backs.

“What are you doing today?” Tooru says. He holds his voice just above a whisper because something about this moment, this morning, _this_ kitchen with Iwaizumi’s shoulder brushing against his, feels so fragile he is scared to break it if he speaks too loudly.

He only turns his head when he feels Iwaizumi’s gaze on him for longer than is strictly necessary. Iwaizumi isn’t frowning, but there are the beginnings of a crease at the top of his nose that means he’s trying to figure out if Tooru is being purposefully difficult or not.

“What are you talking about? I thought you didn’t have work today.”

“I don’t.” Tooru shakes his head, not sure how that is supposed to be an answer to his question. The creases above Iwaizumi’s nose deepen.

“So, I’m doing whatever you’re doing today,” he says slowly.

Oh. Tooru breathes very, very softly and sets his mug on the countertop because he doesn’t trust his hands not to twitch. _Oh_ , he thinks.

“Oh,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Are we not…hanging out?” Iwaizumi asks.

Tooru stares at him. “Of course we are.”

It’s not exactly a shock, because _of course_. Tooru knew they would spend the day together because they both have a day off and it’s just what they do. But he thinks about shouting at Iwaizumi in silence, thinks about begging desperately from him to hear, thinks maybe he hasn’t been so willing to listen himself.

He thinks, _I’m doing whatever you’re doing._ He thinks, _you’re a reminder of my home._ He thinks, _felt weird being in the quiet apartment without you._

“Right. Good,” Iwaizumi says, then shoves Tooru’s shoulder, making him stumble to the side. “Stop being so weird.”

Tooru laughs. “I’m not weird. I’m showering first by the way.”

With that, he abandons his coffee and ducks out of the kitchen, but not before he hears Iwaizumi’s “Oi!” and the sound of his own mug clattering into the sink. Tooru already has a head start and the corridor isn’t that long, but he lets himself be caught because that’s the game.

He thinks, o _ur first home._

#

“What are some cures for nightmares?” Tooru asks Matsuoka towards the end of their session, when she asks if there’s anything else he wants to cover before their time runs out.

Matsuoka tilts her head and watches him for a few seconds. She never looks surprised and never, ever furrows her brow at him, but Tooru squirms anyway.

“Are you having nightmares?” she asks.

“No,” Tooru says. “I’m trying to help someone else.”

He knows that Matsuoka can probably figure out it’s Iwaizumi. He’s mentioned others of his friends, but Iwaizumi is the only name that crops up repetitively and he is easily the most likely candidate to push Tooru’s concern to the point of asking Matsuoka for help.

“Well, you know a lot of the treatment advice already. Things like establishing a routine and relaxing before bed help with nightmares just as well as insomnia. I can’t recommend anything specific for your friend, but yoga and meditation are also common suggestions. If there’s a connection to another health issue, medication might be an option, given that your friend were to speak to a general practitioner.”

Tooru nods and frowns. He knows most of this already; he hadn’t expected Matsuoka to be able to solve the problem, especially without any specifics, but he’s disappointed all the same that he doesn’t have any new tactics to take home to Iwaizumi.

When he remains deep in thought for several seconds, Matsuoka continues, “Recurring nightmares often stem from something else and it can sometimes be necessary to identify and treat them at the source.”

“Thanks, Matsuoka,” Tooru says and flashes her a bright smile. He doesn’t feel any less helpless. He _still_ doesn’t know how to take this weight from Iwaizumi if Iwaizumi won’t talk to him.

He suppresses a sigh and gets up, swinging his tote bag onto his shoulder and saying, “I’ll see you next week!” on his way to the door.

“Tooru,” Matsuoka says and there is a gentleness in her tone that makes Tooru pause, “I just want you to remember that this might not be something you can fix, and that’s okay. Your friend isn’t expecting you to have all the answers. It’s not your job to heal everyone.”

She knows him too well.

“I know,” Tooru says in the doorway. “but I can’t not _try_.”

#

It has been a _day_.

Tooru’s first thought when he lets himself into the apartment is that he sort of wishes he lived alone so that there would be no chance of dealing with any further human interaction. It doesn’t last long, because their front door opens directly into the main room where the sofa is and Iwaizumi is rather unhelpfully spread out on said sofa and the ache in Tooru’s chest is decidedly more longing than anxiety.

Still, it has been a _day and a half._ Tooru feels like his body has been dragging behind itself since he woke up and he had spent the better part of all four of his classes poking at bruises in his head until the whole thing unravelled. He feels like crying, except that he’s so exhausted even the thought wears him out a little. He feels like sinking.

He ends up beside the sofa without really realising it. Iwaizumi is engrossed in a novel—Tooru can’t remember what it’s called though he’s heard bits and pieces of it read aloud to him over the past few weeks—but he looks up when Tooru leans over him.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says and then isn’t convinced he can manage anything else.

Iwaizumi turns back to his book but he shifts his arm from where it’s resting on his knee and lets his legs fall open. Tooru doesn’t hesitate to climb in between them.

This position was popular when they were younger, Tooru forcing his way into Iwaizumi’s lap until they eventually relaxed into leaning against one another, but they gave it up as they got older in favour of hooking their ankles around each other’s or one or other of them resting their head in the other’s lap.

Privately, having his back pressed to Iwaizumi’s chest is still one of Tooru’s favourites. He’s not sure if Iwaizumi knows this and that’s why it is mostly reserved for when Tooru has had a _day_.

He leans back into Iwaizumi’s warmth, allows himself this small luxury, and Iwaizumi slides the fingers of his free hand—the one not holding his book open—into Tooru’s hair. Tooru lets his eyes fall closed and tries to ease out his aching muscles.

He hates when his limbs grow heavy overnight like this, transfiguring him into something unrecognisable by morning. His senses all feel foreign: eyes out of focus, fingers flinching whenever they brush against something, tongue cold and sunken in his mouth. He knows these signs far too well, but he wishes he had caught them earlier. It’s all the more difficult to climb out of this shipwreck when he’s already made out of lead.

“Tooru,” Iwaizumi says and Tooru’s thoughts swirl to a standstill at the use of his first name. He twists to look behind him, but Iwaizumi gives him a discontented groan and uses the hand in Tooru’s hair to turn his head forwards again.

“Do you need me to tell you that you’re more than just a pretty face? That you’re strong and capable and the most brilliant person I know in probably every way? Silly Tooru,” he scratches lightly against Tooru’s scalp, “you know that already.”

Tooru leans his head back slightly so that the base of his skull is resting in Iwaizumi’s palm and lets out what feels like his first real breath of the day. It’s easier like this, Iwaizumi’s thighs pressed to his hips, Iwaizumi’s fingers in his hair, Iwaizumi’s hot breath on the back of his neck. Tooru doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to concentrate so hard on holding all his loose edges together, when Iwaizumi is there saying _give it to me; let me take that for you._

“Still a pretty face too, though, right?” Tooru says a few minutes later, once he’s reacquainted his lungs to the shape of breathing and the joke tastes less like acid on his tongue.

“Yes, you’re very pretty,” Iwaizumi agrees. Tooru sighs and presses his cheek into Iwaizumi’s arm, propped against the back of the sofa and holding his novel. Iwaizumi waits for him to finish shifting around and resumes running the fingers of his other hand through Tooru’s hair.

Iwaizumi has always been very generous with his compliments. Even as kids, he would openly praise the others in their class for little things that no one else seemed to notice, and it’s a habit that carried into their teen years and beyond. He’s always been so blunt and honest that Tooru doesn’t think it’s ever occurred to him not to voice the kind thoughts in his head.

If it were anyone other than Iwaizumi, Tooru thinks he might have been jealous. He’s always been liked for his kindness, his honesty, and his gentle strength. People followed Tooru but they _trusted_ Iwaizumi; he was to whom they came for help because he was always a hand on their back, always a reassurance, always a heartfelt compliment.

And always with Tooru, he was a silent look: one that said _yes, I can carry this,_ and _I won’t let this hurt you again,_ and, more often than not, _I’ve got you._

Iwaizumi tilts the novel in his hand back up to where he can see it and starts reading aloud. He’s in the middle of a paragraph and Tooru can’t for the life of him remember what the book is even about, but it doesn’t matter. He closes his eyes, lets the warmth of Iwaizumi’s bicep seep under his skin, and listens contentedly to the rise and fall of Iwaizumi’s voice.

It’s so easy to love him like this. Without the pressure, without the anxiety and the questioning and the constant, niggling desire to be loved in return, it comes as second nature. Like this, Iwaizumi makes him quiet. Some days, Tooru feels as though he has been fighting his entire life, until Iwaizumi looks at him and says _it’s okay. You can rest. I’ll take it from here._

Truly, Tooru never stood a chance.

#

Matsukawa scores a small-time gig in a dingy pub and doesn’t tell any of them, but Hanamaki texts Tooru the address the week before and Tooru, in turn, drags Iwaizumi along because it’s the Friday before a long weekend and Hanamaki has a spare futon in his dorm and a roommate who’s never home.

The pub is, admittedly, the dingiest Tooru has ever been to (and that’s saying something, considering he’s a university student working minimum wage) but a gig is a gig. They find Hanamaki to the left of the makeshift stage where Matsukawa is currently tuning his guitar.

Hanamaki crows when he sees them, pulling them both into the same hug.

“I haven’t seen you guys in _years_ ,” he says, pushing them back and grinning.

“You spent nearly every day with us over the break,” Iwaizumi points out.

“ _Eons_ , really!”

Tooru laughs and claps a hand against Hanamaki’s shoulder, before wandering off to the bar to get drinks for himself and Iwaizumi. By the time he makes it back, Hanamaki and Iwaizumi have moved away from the wall until they’re centred in front of the stage and Matsukawa is adjusting the microphone stand. Tooru passes a beer off to Iwaizumi as he slips in between his friends.

Matsukawa is _good_. Tooru, of course, knows this already. They’ve been friends for four years and Matsukawa was brilliant long before that. But there’s something different about him on stage, under the dim lighting, like he’s just started to come alive. Hanamaki, Iwaizumi, and Tooru cheer obnoxiously after every song and Matsukawa calls them exaggerated but he’s smiling and, really, he deserves it. Eventually, he begins to garner more of a crowd, the other occupants of the pub slowly pressing in around them to see what the fuss is about.

People pass back and forth around them, jostling the trio together, and Tooru curls an arm around Iwaizumi’s shoulders, because he can. Because he’s allowed. Iwaizumi shifts under the weight until he’s mostly in front of Tooru, his back pressed to Tooru’s chest and Tooru’s arm dangling across his own. Tooru doesn’t miss the look Hanamaki gives him.

They are just friends (that’s _all_ there is) and physical intimacy is normal, is like breathing for them. It has been for sixteen years. But Tooru catches the way Hanamaki looks at them, wonders how they seem to the strangers in the crowd. What does it look like: the way Iwaizumi presses up against him, when he leans forward to speak directly into Iwaizumi’s ear, how they share their third beer back and forth? He wonders, sometimes, what game exactly they are playing.

The show continues until past midnight and Matsukawa comes off the stage reeling. Tooru and Iwaizumi raise another wholehearted cheer and Hanamaki practically throws himself at Matsukawa.

The four of them pile into a taxi, still chattering excitedly about the show. Matsukawa spends most of the trip blushing and laughing and kissing the back of Hanamaki’s hand intermittently. Tooru spends most of it watching the shape of Iwaizumi’s throat when he twists from the passenger seat to talk to them.

Hanamaki’s dorm room is a double, which makes it bigger than either Iwaizumi’s or Tooru’s had been the previous year, but it’s still a tight squeeze between the beds for four full grown men.

It’s one in the morning but none of them are tired, still hyped up on the adrenaline of Matsukawa’s performance, and Hanamaki is still fairly tipsy, so they sit on the floor instead squished together.

“Issei, come help me with the popcorn.” Hanamaki tugs at his boyfriend’s arm, but Matsukawa leans his head back against the bed and pretends to be asleep.

“I’m tired. Take Oikawa, he could use the exercise.”

“Hey!” Tooru smacks Matsukawa’s calf and he kicks out in retaliation, catching Tooru’s hipbone and making him hiss.

“I’ll help,” Iwaizumi says. He leans on Tooru unnecessarily as he gets to his feet, just to mess up his hair on the way.

“Don’t annoy Matsukawa to death before we get back,” he says.

“I’m not annoying,” Tooru says indignantly but neither Iwaizumi nor Hanamaki look back as they leave and Matsukawa is still feigning sleep.

“Mattsun. Hey, Mattsun,” Tooru says, poking his index finger along Matsukawa’s leg. Matsukawa shakes him off and doesn’t reply.

“Mattsun. Am I annoying, Mattsun?”

“Unbearably so,” Matsukawa says, then cracks one eye open. “How are you, though? Takahiro said you haven’t been the one to bring up Iwaizumi in the past at least five conversations, which has to be a record or something.”

Tooru rolls his eyes. “I can talk about things other than Iwa-chan, you know.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Tooru smacks Matsukawa’s leg again, but he doesn’t answer the question. He mimics Matsukawa instead, tilting his own head back and closing his eyes. He isn’t at all surprised by the development in Matsukawa and Hanamaki’s relationship and he’s happy for them, truly he is. It’s not even that he doesn’t trust them anymore, it’s just that his pathetic whinging didn’t feel quite so one-sided when Hanamaki was pining over _his_ best friend in the exact same way. So he isn’t avoiding the subject, per se, but he feels a little like he’s being left behind. Like he’s the only one hung up on childhood crushes that he’s too much of a coward to do anything about.

“Seriously, Oikawa, is everything okay?” Matsukawa asks.

Tooru hums thoughtfully and tries for a smile. “Just fine, Mattsun. I’m trying to get over it.”

It isn’t a lie, but it’s not strictly the truth either. Tooru is no fool. He’s been in love with Iwaizumi since they were four years old. Against all odds, against every curveball in the universe being tossed his way, he’s _still_ in love with him. He knows Iwaizumi is probably it for him. He knows he will love him, always, no matter what he tries, because it’s just a fact. Because it’s a truth.

Matsukawa taps his toes against Tooru’s thigh to get his attention. Tooru doesn’t open his eyes but he twitches his fingers against Matsukawa’s ankle to show he’s listening.

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“What exactly is talking to him going to do?” Tooru says. He wants to laugh but his throat is blocked and he thinks it might come out sounding more like a sob. If Matsukawa hears it in his voice, he’s kind enough not to comment.

“I just mean, maybe if you two talked about it… Well, what have you got to lose?”

Tooru does laugh at that. It comes out hollow and choked.

“Everything. _Him._ ”

“Come on,” Matsukawa says. “You’re not going to lose him. This is _Iwaizumi_ we’re talking about. He followed you to Aoba Johsai, didn’t he? And to university. And to your apartment.”

Tooru opens his eyes and sits up straight to stare at Matsukawa. “ _I_ followed _him_.”

“You followed him where?” Matsukawa asks.

“Everywhere,” Tooru says, exasperated. He holds up one hand and ticks off on his fingers. “In junior high, Iwa-chan said he liked the way Seijou played and they had the best academic record. When we were seniors, he said Waseda had a good internship program for veterinary undergraduates. Last year, someone drank a milkshake he left in the fridge during finals week and he cried. He told me his dream was to live in the city, at least seven storeys high, when we were _six_.”

Matsukawa blinks and opens his mouth, then promptly closes it and blinks again.

“So, okay, you’ve been following him,” he says. Tooru nods. “Have you told him that?”

“What do you mean, have I _told_ him? He knows! I’m right here!”

Matsukawa shrugs at that and starts to say something, but Iwaizumi and Hanamaki appear in the doorway, two bowls of popcorn and a bottle of sprite between them. Tooru tucks in his legs to make space for the snacks and Iwaizumi takes the cushion next to him. Hanamaki sits with his back against Matsukawa’s arm and stretches his legs along the length of the bed beside him.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru says abruptly. “Why did you go to Waseda?”

“What?” Iwaizumi looks at him like he doesn’t understand the question.

“Out of all the universities,” Tooru sweeps out one arm, “why did you pick Waseda?”

“It’s where you were,” Iwaizumi says. And that is something.

Matsukawa taps against Tooru’s leg again but Tooru can’t stop staring at the side of Iwaizumi’s face, can’t stop thinking _it’s where you were_ , like it’s obvious, like he never would have considered anywhere else.

“So, anyway, Iwaizumi and I were just talking about what it would be like if we had arms like seals,” Hanamaki says.

“ _You_ were talking about that,” Iwaizumi argues. “I was trying to tell you seals don’t fucking have arms.”

“Yes, they do. Issei, imagine you had seal arms. What’s your first move?”

“They’re called flippers!” Iwaizumi says. Hanamaki flaps an impatient hand at him and Matsukawa ignores him completely, too busy mulling over Hanamaki’s question.

Iwaizumi glances at Tooru who is still, inexplicably, staring at him. He tilts his head towards the door, a silent question: _do you need a minute?_ Tooru reaches for Iwaizumi’s hand, slips his index finger between the leather bracelet and the skin of Iwaizumi’s inner wrist, and shakes his head. He stops staring after that, turning back to the debate about seal arms— “They’re not arms, they’re flippers, how many fucking times!” —and pushing his conversation with Matsukawa to the back of his mind.

But, always, he watches Iwaizumi quietly out of the corner of his eye.

It’s pushing five am by the time Hanamaki starts drifting off on Matsukawa’s shoulder and Tooru’s entire body is cramped from sitting cross-legged on the floor. Iwaizumi ducks out of the room to brush his teeth and Matsukawa takes the opportunity to dig his heel into Tooru’s side, raising his eyebrows.

“You know he just applied to all the same places as you, right? He told me that.”

“No, he didn’t,” Tooru says. Except it’s true. They _had_ applied to a lot of the same universities, but it wasn’t planned; that was just how it worked out. Tooru had assumed Iwaizumi would pick Waseda so he’d aimed for it. They hadn’t even talked about it until they got their acceptance letters on the same day and at that point it was a done deal.

Matsukawa is still looking at him funny when Iwaizumi returns and the other three have migrated to the beds. Tooru rolls over to face the wall instead of trying to decipher the eye contact that passes between Matsukawa and Hanamaki.

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything to him, just stretches out on the futon and bids the other two goodnight. But once the lights are out and the breathing from the bed across the room has evened out, Tooru feels a tug at his blanket. He turns back over and Iwaizumi pats at the mattress until he finds Tooru’s shoulder in the dark. He follows it down his arm to his hand, which he grips and squeezes twice.

Tooru feels like crying. He has been desperately following at Iwaizumi’s side his entire life and maybe, just maybe, Iwaizumi has been clinging back just as tight. He doesn’t know how to put that into words yet so instead he squeezes back, and it’s something. It’s everything.

#

Tooru has all week to figure out the words. Really, he does. Between classes and work shifts and study sessions, between mornings spent with and without Iwaizumi, he has a lot of free time and he uses most of it to think about following Iwaizumi to Waseda and Iwaizumi following him right back.

In his International Cinema lecture on Tuesday morning, Tooru tunes out his professor and writes _he followed you_ three times in the margin of his notes.

Hanamaki texts him a picture of an ugly statue while Tooru is having lunch on Wednesday, and he accidentally types out _he applied to all the same places as you_ instead of a response.

He catches the bus back to the apartment on Thursday and thinks _what have you got to lose? What have you got to lose? What have you got to lose?_

On Friday, he closes the café and comes home late to find Iwaizumi laying out a stack of takeaway containers on the coffee table. Tooru stops in the doorway, stepping on the heels of his shoes to slip them off, and takes the moment to watch Iwaizumi, the tender way he fills their home, how he cares for the both of them.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, once Tooru finally walks properly into the room. “I picked up dinner from that place you like. You know, with the onigiri.”

The words are in there somewhere. It’s something about Tooru eating the bruised parts of Iwaizumi’s bananas; it’s something about Iwaizumi ordering Tooru’s favourite even when Tooru isn’t there to remind him.

“Thanks, Iwa-chan,” he says instead, which isn’t the same thing but it’s sort of close.

_What have you got to lose?_

Iwaizumi settles down on the floor, stretching his legs underneath the coffee table and resting a plate in his lap, so Tooru spreads himself across the whole length of the sofa. It has already gone ten pm and, despite his best efforts, Tooru hasn’t been sleeping all that much, which means neither of them have been sleeping. His exhaustion is bone deep.

Still, Iwaizumi rents a film and they settle in for a late night. Tooru gets the feeling Iwaizumi might be trying to force him to stay awake long enough to pass out, because if he falls asleep on the sofa at least he will be _sleeping._ He tries not to think too hard about it—or about the fact that it might actually be working—because he has spent the whole week thinking.

Within an hour, he’s drifting off. He jolts awake every time he slips towards sleep and tries to remember what’s happening in the film because Iwaizumi picked it and Tooru doesn’t want to be rude. Though, he catches Iwaizumi checking up on him every few minutes and he suspects _he_ might not be paying attention to the film either.

“Hajime,” Tooru says, during a quiet scene, just because he feels like it. Iwaizumi makes a noise in the back of his throat to show he’s listening but Tooru doesn’t have anything else to say. He sort of just wanted Iwaizumi’s attention.

After a few minutes, Iwaizumi tilts his head back against the sofa and gazes up at Tooru. In the dim light from the television, his eyes are dark and swollen. He scratches his hair against Tooru’s knee until Tooru swats it away.

“What, Oikawa? What is it?”

Tooru’s half trying to get back into the movie, but he’s long since lost the trail of the plot and Iwaizumi is staring expectantly up at him, his shoulders all loose and eyes blown wide open.

“Hajime,” he says again and digs his toes into the point where Iwaizumi’s right shoulder meets his neck. “C’mere.”

Iwaizumi grumbles—he’s as drowsy and loose-limbed as Tooru right now—but he shuffles obediently across the carpet until he’s sitting in front of Tooru’s chest. When he tilts his head backwards this time, he’s close enough to flutter his breath across Tooru’s cheeks.

“Up.” Tooru shoves at Iwaizumi’s shoulder to get him to straighten his spine, force of habit. “You’ll do your neck in sitting all slouched like that.”

Iwaizumi complies readily, instantly, like he’s been poised all night for Tooru’s reprimand. It’s so _easy,_ the way they follow where the other leads, the way Tooru loves him so blatantly, and maybe Iwaizumi is trying to tell him right back.

The words are there _somewhere._ Tooru keeps looking.

He digs his thumbs into the soft flesh at the base of Iwaizumi’s neck, rubbing slowly against the resisting muscle. Iwaizumi tilts his head to one side to give Tooru the space to work. He moves methodically across Iwaizumi’s shoulders, hands meeting at his spine and sliding downwards. There’s a knot underneath his right shoulder blade and he groans softly when Tooru pushes his thumb against it.

It’s something about Iwaizumi buying them dinner and holding Tooru when he’s heavy. It’s something about Tooru bringing pieces of their home everywhere and soothing Iwaizumi’s aches. Tooru has been telling Iwaizumi he loves him every day for sixteen years but maybe, just maybe, he needs to say it with words.

The film hums in the background and Tooru falls asleep with his thumb hooked in the collar of Iwaizumi’s shirt.

#

The thing is, if they’ve both been following each other all these years, then who is leading? 

#

It is Wednesday, it is the afternoon, their high-rise apartment is slowly simmering in the summer sun, and everything cracks over Tooru’s head.

He is the first home for once, so he’s stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots to make soup when Iwaizumi gets back from classes. He hears Iwaizumi disappear down the hall to drop his books in his room and he’s moved onto chopping the carrots by the time Iwaizumi comes into the kitchen. He walks up behind Tooru, leans over to steal a piece of carrot, and hops up onto the counter.

“Hey, do you want to see a movie this weekend?” Iwaizumi asks without preamble. Tooru flicks his gaze to him.

“What? What movie?”

“Dunno. Whatever’s good.” Iwaizumi shrugs and steals another piece of carrot. “I just felt like going to the pictures.”

“Oh. Sure, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says. It isn’t exactly out of the ordinary for them, but Tooru has been searching so hard for the words he needs lately that he can’t help turning all of them over in his head.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says and his tone is all over the place. Tooru stops chopping and looks up. “I meant as a date.”

“You—” Tooru says and immediately stops, because he has no idea what to say to that.

“I meant…” Iwaizumi pauses, and Tooru has been watching him for sixteen years so he recognises the doubt that shutters across his face. “I said that all wrong, but I meant would you want to go on a date with me? To see a movie. As a date. With me.”

“What are you talking about?” Tooru feels impossibly lost. He has _always_ followed Iwaizumi but suddenly, for the first time, he’s not sure he knows where they’re going.

“Tooru,” Iwaizumi says, his voice so soft and small and desperate that Tooru thinks, _am I supposed to be leading?_

“I mean, yes,” he says. “Obviously, yes, of course. But also, what?”

Iwaizumi lets out a breath that is caught somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. It’s as if he melts back into himself, all the tension seeping out of his body. He leans back against the wall behind him and closes his eyes, and then he really does laugh. Tooru puts down the knife he’s holding.

“Seriously, Iwa-chan, what?”

“I just thought we should do something about,” he drags his index finger in a line between himself and Tooru, “this.”

He opens his eyes then and sits up, grinning at Tooru.

“We both knew, right?” he says. Tooru’s head hurts. “I figured one of us had to just _say_ something so we could get on with it.”

“We both knew _what_?” Tooru asks. He has been looking _so_ hard for the words and it’s as though Iwaizumi has cracked him open and picked them right out of his chest.

“That we’re basically in love? We _did_ both know that, didn’t we?”

Tooru’s hands have never felt less like his own.

“You _knew_?” he says and then his brain catches up with the rest of the sentence. “No, wait, don’t answer that one. You’re in love with me?”

It’s Iwaizumi’s turn to stare at Tooru as if he has no idea what he’s talking about. He slides off the countertop to stand on a level with Tooru and look him properly in the eye.

“Tooru, of _course_. What do you mean? I’ve always been in love with you.”

 _I am in love with you. I have been for sixteen years,_ Tooru thinks. And then he says as much out loud.

Iwaizumi’s expression softens. He lifts one hand and slowly, gently cups it around Tooru’s neck. Tooru can feel their pulses jumping together. It’s so normal, so familiar, for them to touch like this, and it is everything.

“You really didn’t know?” Iwaizumi asks quietly. Tooru turns his chin to kiss the base of Iwaizumi’s palm, beneath his thumb, and the gesture is new and still so achingly familiar.

“I think I kind of did,” he shakes his head, “but I didn’t know if you knew yet.”

Iwaizumi huffs a laugh and uses his hold on Tooru’s neck to bring him closer until their foreheads press together. And this, too, is something so ingrained in every essence of Tooru’s being. Every part of him is wrapped up in the ways Iwaizumi has touched and held him over the years.

“I think I am going to kiss you now,” Iwaizumi says. Tooru brings his own hand up to brush his thumb over Iwaizumi’s cheek and feels Iwaizumi shift his up into Tooru’s hair.

“Okay,” Tooru breathes, and Iwaizumi makes good on his promise.

Kissing Iwaizumi feels, inexplicably, like coming home, like Tooru has spent sixteen years reaching, searching, yearning and he has finally found a safe place to land. It feels like finally putting down all the heaviness he has been carrying. It feels like two names smudging into one, like two initials matching in different houses, like two boys growing into one another.

Iwaizumi breaks away slowly but holds Tooru’s head in place, as though he can’t bear to put more than an inch between them.

Tooru sucks in a breath and says, “I have to call Hanamaki.”

That makes Iwaizumi laugh, properly, loudly, his whole body quivering with it. He lets his hand fall out of Tooru’s hair and leans against his shoulder instead, his laughter escaping across Tooru’s chest.

“We’re kissing,” he says. “We’re _kissing_ and you’re thinking about Hanamaki.”

Tooru can feel Iwaizumi’s breath all across his neck every time he speaks. He shivers and tickles Iwaizumi’s nape with his fingertips.

“I just think he’d like to know.”

Iwaizumi laughs again. He presses his mouth, half-open, against the sliver of skin where Tooru’s shirt has dislodged and exposed part of his chest.

“I’m sure he would,” he says and straightens up again. They lean automatically towards one another. “You think he could wait five minutes?”

Tooru stares at Iwaizumi’s lips, split open and smooth, and he thinks, _I have all the time in the world to find the right words, but this? Right now, this will do._

“Yeah, definitely,” he says. “Maybe even ten.”

#

Iwaizumi digs out their initials from the hallway cupboard. Tooru doesn’t know when and he doesn’t ask, but he comes home to find them propped against each other on the kitchen windowsill, an _H_ and a _T_ overlapping at the edges. He stares at them while he pours himself a glass of water from the sink.

Before he leaves the kitchen, he pauses to brush his thumb over the smiley face on Iwaizumi’s _H._

#

“In the nightmare,” Iwaizumi says one night, when they’re laid out in his bed and Tooru has as much of his skin as possible pressed against Iwaizumi’s, “it’s always the same. Different scenario, different location, but it’s always people dying. Sometimes it’s my parents, or your mum, or Hanamaki and Matsukawa. Sometimes it’s someone we knew in junior high, or someone I saw on the bus last week. Mostly it’s you.”

Tooru doesn’t move, doesn’t even want to breathe. This moment, Iwaizumi’s voice, this quiet confession, feels like tempered glass at the tips of his fingers. He keeps his face tucked against Iwaizumi’s neck, digs his fingers a little harder into the left side of Iwaizumi’s chest, and listens.

“But I’m always the one who does the killing. Or sometimes it’s an accident, but it’s always my _fault._ ”

He’s silent for a long time and Tooru matches up their breathing, pushes himself tighter against Iwaizumi’s body.

Eventually, Tooru whispers, “Iwa-chan” and Iwaizumi’s arm, which has been curled around Tooru’s shoulders, flinches. Tooru holds his breath.

“I’m so scared,” Iwaizumi says finally, “of hurting people. I’m scared that I don’t know what to do with my hands and if I touch you wrong, maybe you’ll break.”

Tooru can’t help it. He feels like crying. He twists his head to press a closed-mouth kiss to the bare skin of Iwaizumi’s collarbone.

“Don’t be stupid, Iwa-chan,” he says. He pushes himself up high enough that he can roll on top of Iwaizumi, slide their legs between one another and fold his arms across Iwaizumi’s chest, resting his chin on the back of his hands. Iwaizumi doesn’t look at him so Tooru contents himself with staring at Iwaizumi instead.

“I’m not going to break. Give me a little credit here, Hajime, I’m tougher than that.”

It’s only because Tooru has been watching so carefully out of the corner of his eye for sixteen years that he catches the tiniest smile in the dip of Iwaizumi’s lips.

It isn’t a joke. Tooru knows this best of all because _he’s_ the one who has spent a lifetime trying to figure it out. But he remembers Matsuoka telling him he can’t fix everything. He remembers Iwaizumi crawling into his bed to sleep but never, ever to talk about it afterwards. He remembers that he has spent his whole life dragging something weighted behind him and that Iwaizumi says _I can carry that_ but only when Tooru brings it to him. He remembers how hard it is to ask for help.

“You are not going to hurt anyone,” he says. He shifts to sit upright, straddling Iwaizumi’s stomach, so that Iwaizumi has no choice but to look at him. “You’ve spent your whole life being scared of someone you’re not but, Hajime. Silly, silly Hajime. I’ve been here for most of it and have you ever once touched me with intent to hurt?”

“Of course not,” Iwaizumi says instantly, reflexively, and then pauses.

Tooru smiles and cups his palm over Iwaizumi’s chest again, right above his heart. He presses his hand flat, willing Iwaizumi to feel every inch of it, steady and solid and touching Iwaizumi without a hint of fear.

“There is so much kindness in here,” he tells him. “That’s _all_ there is. Trust me, I’ve been looking for sixteen years.”

Iwaizumi closes his eyes and Tooru can feel the constant, rhythmic pulse beneath his palm. He watches Iwaizumi for a long time, openly, with both eyes focused on his face. Between them, Tooru’s hand stays flush against Iwaizumi’s chest and Iwaizumi’s heart beats.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru whispers, “do you think maybe you should talk to someone?”

Iwaizumi frowns, blinking his eyes open. “I’m talking to you.”

“I mean, someone who can help. Properly.”

Iwaizumi sighs and slides his fingers into Tooru’s hair, cupping the side of his head and tapping his thumb against Tooru’s temple. Tooru leans automatically into the touch, letting the whole weight of his head rest against the heel of Iwaizumi’s palm. He is so careful with his hands always, so cautious about the way he holds Tooru together. Tooru doesn’t think he’s ever known gentleness as calculated and tender as the way Iwaizumi cares for the people in his life.

“Thank you,” Iwaizumi says, which isn’t an answer, but Tooru lets him have it anyway. He uses the hand in Tooru’s hair to tug him close enough to kiss and Tooru lets him do that as well, because his lips are always, always as forgiving as his hands.

Later, much later, when the night has blackened around them, still cocooned within one another, Iwaizumi says, “I think, maybe, I’ll try.”

It’s enough.

#

They have been living in one another’s personal space for sixteen years but there are lines, there are always _lines_. Over the weeks that follow, Tooru creeps slowly across them until he and Iwaizumi bleed so easily together, like two names on a square of card. By the time the term finishes and Hanamaki and Matsukawa use their break to finally visit the apartment, Tooru has completely migrated into Iwaizumi’s bedroom.

The first thing Hanamaki says when they show their guests to the newly spare room is, “And this bed used to be Oikawa’s? Gross. I don’t want to sleep in that.”

Tooru tries to kick him from the doorway, but Iwaizumi has a finger through one of his beltloops and he doesn’t particularly want to move any further away than he has to. Matsukawa raises his eyebrows at the placement of Iwaizumi’s hand on Tooru’s waist.

“Whipped,” he says. “The both of you.”

Iwaizumi laughs and tugs Tooru backwards by his jeans, so that they’re flush together and Iwaizumi can just rest his chin on Tooru’s shoulder.

“What’s your point?” he asks.

“No,” Hanamaki says, holding up a flat palm. “No, don’t do that. Gross. Oikawa, _stop._ ”

“Stop what?” Tooru asks. “I’m breathing.”

“That thing you’re doing with your face. Oh my god, stop it.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

Matsukawa tilts his head, staring at Tooru as if trying to see him from Hanamaki’s point of view.

“Oh, gross,” he says suddenly.

Hanamaki slaps a hand to Matsukawa’s bicep. “Right?”

“What am I doing?” Tooru asks, exasperated. Behind him, he feels Iwaizumi shaking with silent laughter. He looks at him over his shoulder, but Iwaizumi avoids eye contact in favour of pressing his forehead into Tooru’s shoulder blade.

“What?” Tooru glances between the three of them. “I’m just smiling. Are you talking about my _smile_?”

“Oikawa, it really is gross,” Matsukawa says.

“You’ve seen me smile before, Mattsun!”

“No, really, it is,” Hanamaki adds.

“Okay, don’t be mean,” Iwaizumi says, lifting his head back onto Tooru’s shoulder. He slips his finger from Tooru’s belt to wrap his arms around him, hands overlapping across Tooru’s stomach, and squeezes tighter.

“See? I have a _nice_ smile. Right, Iwa-chan?” Tooru says.

“Right,” Iwaizumi agrees, directly into Tooru’s ear which makes him shiver. Hanamaki pretends to retch into Matsukawa’s chest.

“Maybe I liked you better before _this_ happened.” He waves a vague hand at Iwaizumi and Tooru. “At least the pining brought your ego down to a manageable level.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” Tooru says, at the same time as Iwaizumi asks, “What pining?”

Tooru and Hanamaki make eye contact, both stiffening slightly.

“He doesn’t have to know,” Tooru says, already pleading.

“I seem to remember that you had some things to say to Issei,” Hanamaki says.

“You didn’t tell me he was on the phone as well! I haven’t told him _anything_ since then.”

Matsukawa, who has been mostly laughing at the three of them, perks at that.

“There’s more?” he asks.

“Yeah, four years’ worth,” Hanamaki says absently.

“Makki!”

“Are you saying you have four years’ evidence of Oikawa embarrassing himself?” Iwaizumi asks. “And you’re not going to share?”

“Iwa-chan, that is _so_ rude. How is it embarrassing that I liked you?”

“Everything you do is embarrassing,” Iwaizumi says, then kisses the juncture of Tooru’s neck and shoulder which Tooru thinks rather undermines his claim.

“My lips are sealed if yours are?” Hanamaki offers.

Tooru nods instantly. “Deal.”

“You two are ridiculous. You can’t possibly have said anything _that_ incriminating,” Iwaizumi says with his lips still pressed against Tooru’s skin.

“That’s none of your business,” Tooru says and slides his hands over Iwaizumi’s. “Come on. We should get dinner and leave them to unpack.”

Iwaizumi hums and Tooru feels the vibration all the way down his spine and through his ribcage. He finally relinquishes his hold and steps back into the hall, his finger snagging Tooru’s belt loop again to drag him along.

“Hey, Oikawa?” Matsukawa calls as they’re leaving. Tooru ducks back into the doorway to peer at him.

“Yeah?”

“I _am_ glad you’re so happy, you know. We’re just teasing. Also, you have nothing on me so I will be telling Iwaizumi about what happened in Hanamaki’s dorm.”

“Excuse me? What happened in Hanamaki’s dorm?” Iwaizumi says. Tooru pushes him back into the hall.

“You’re so mean, Mattsun. And I was _just_ about to say you and Makki should visit more.”

He can hear Matsukawa and Hanamaki’s laughter chase he and Iwaizumi as he shepherds him all the way to the kitchen.

#

By the third day of the trip, Tooru is ready to eat his words. He loves his friends, and he loves having them all in one place. It reminds him of sleepover weekends in high school, the four of them pressing their knees together in a circle on the floor, huddled around a flashlight and whispering secrets in the early hours of the morning.

But it has only been three days and Tooru misses having Iwaizumi to himself. It’s not that they never get a moment alone but living with Iwaizumi has spoiled Tooru. He feels stupid with his selfishness, but he has grown used to Iwaizumi, mellow in the morning sunlight, and Iwaizumi, warm and close in the evenings, and Iwaizumi, coming home always to him, always just his.

It’s why he catches Iwaizumi on the third morning, after Matsukawa and Hanamaki mysteriously disappear into the spare room, and tugs him down onto the sofa.

“Tooru?” Iwaizumi says. He lets himself be manhandled into a horizontal position, so that Tooru can curl into the side of his body.

“Tired,” is all Tooru says, though it’s only half the truth.

“You weren’t up last night, were you?” Iwaizumi asks. He shifts a little to pillow Tooru’s head with his shoulder and slide an arm around his back.

“No,” Tooru mumbles. “Wasn’t asleep for much of it either, though.”

Iwaizumi doesn’t say anything to that, but he rubs his hand slowly over Tooru’s back. Tooru takes this as permission to get comfortable and close his eyes. He _is_ tired, but he mostly just misses this. Iwaizumi in private is quieter, more open, and always focused entirely on Tooru. Tooru wants him like that forever.

“Incoming!” Hanamaki calls from somewhere near the doorway. Tooru shoves his head against Iwaizumi’s shoulder, trying desperately to shield himself, before Hanamaki dives onto the sofa on top of them. Iwaizumi groans and Tooru shoves blindly at Hanamaki, but he wraps his arms around the two of them stubbornly and plants a sloppy kiss, first to Tooru’s cheek and then to Iwaizumi’s.

“Get _off_ , Makki, we’re sleeping,” Tooru says, trying to get enough of a grip to dig his nails into Hanamaki’s forearm.

“Boring,” Hanamaki says and swats Tooru’s hand out of the way. “We’re only here for a week and you’re too busy _sleeping_ to make the most of it. Entertain us!”

“Yeah, Oikawa, you can’t keep monopolising Iwaizumi. We want Iwa-chan time too,” Matsukawa says. Tooru squints his eyes open to see Matsukawa leaning over them, his arms folded across the back of the sofa.

“Don’t call me that,” Iwaizumi grumbles, but they all ignore him.

“He’s _my_ boyfriend! I can monopolise all I want.”

“Iwaizumi belongs to all of us,” Hanamaki says gravely.

Matsukawa nods. “Iwaizumi is for all people.”

“What the hell does _that_ mean?” Iwaizumi says. Tooru gives up trying to get rid of Hanamaki and accepts that their brief nap is over. Hanamaki scoots to the end of the sofa, giving Tooru the space to sit up and swing his legs round to the floor. Iwaizumi’s arm, previously curled around Tooru, slips away and he presses his hand to Tooru’s waist instead, brushing his thumb across the bottom of his ribcage.

“It _means_ I’m bored. Let’s go somewhere!” Hanamaki says.

Tooru rubs his eye with the heel of his palm and says, “I thought the point of you visiting was to see the apartment.”

“Yes, and I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen an awful lot of it.”

He does have a point. They’ve spent the past two days holed up in the apartment, lounging across the nearest furniture and catching up languidly, but Tooru isn’t surprised Hanamaki has developed a spot of cabin fever. He’s always been buoyed up on boundless energy.

“We could go out for lunch,” Tooru suggests.

Hanamaki actually _cheers_ , as if it’s the best news he’s heard all year. He’s off the sofa and back down the hall within seconds, Tooru assumes to get ready. He feels Iwaizumi tug lightly on his shirt. He slides his hand over the top of Iwaizumi’s, slotting their fingers in between one another.

“You want to rest?” Iwaizumi asks. “We could go out tomorrow.”

Tooru shrugs and then smiles because Iwaizumi has been taking care of him for sixteen years and it still never stops fluttering in Tooru’s chest.

“I’m not that tired. I’ll be fine,” he says. Iwaizumi lets it go, because he _knows._ He knows Tooru would let him hold it if it was too heavy to carry.

They leave the apartment with a vague destination in mind, a restaurant downtown that Iwaizumi remembers liking, and they end up walking, because the sun is high and warm, and Hanamaki is like a puppy straining at the leash.

They’re halfway through the parklands between their apartment and the restaurant when Iwaizumi finally gives into the boyish instincts that always kick in when the four of them are together. He drops Tooru’s hand and darts forwards, snatching Matsukawa’s cap from his head.

“Hey,” Matsukawa starts to say, but Iwaizumi is already sprinting ahead, predicting Matsukawa giving chase. Matsukawa doesn’t disappoint and Tooru knows he and Hanamaki have lost them at this point. Hanamaki drops back a few paces to walk beside Tooru instead, bumping his shoulder against Tooru’s as they watch.

“Good job all that pining wasn’t for nothing, hey?” he says.

Tooru laughs and says, “Yeah, we got lucky.”

He doesn’t turn to look at Hanamaki. Iwaizumi is using a thick oak tree as a shield, ducking out one side to taunt Matsukawa before dodging quickly to the other, and he’s laughing, his open face turned constantly into the sun.

“Yeah,” Hanamaki agrees after a moment, “we did.”

Matsukawa catches Iwaizumi eventually, wrestles the hat off him and gives him a shove, which devolves somehow into both of them rolling in the grass and the dirt. Once they link back up with Tooru and Hanamaki, Iwaizumi has twigs caught in his hair, his cheeks are rosy with laughter and sunlight, and he looks so much like the five-year-old skinning his palms on the dusty creek bed that Tooru aches for looking at him.

And Tooru has loved him at five, gap in his teeth, and at eleven, scars on his hands, and at seventeen, knit in his brow. And he loves him now, irreversibly, illimitably. He loves _this_ Iwaizumi, this sum of all his parts, this constant, moving miracle at the centre of Tooru’s universe.

Iwaizumi is still bickering with Matsukawa, but he reaches for Tooru’s hand, slides their callouses together, and leans in towards him, as though tugged by his own gravitational pull. He doesn’t complain when Tooru pulls their joined hands up to his mouth and presses a kiss to the corner of Iwaizumi’s palm, the same spot where he has grazed his skin during countless tumbles, where he has rescued bugs from the pavement, pet every dog they walked past on the way home, and set the bones of tiny birds with broken wings. The same spot where he has always, always held Tooru’s loose edges together.

Iwaizumi pauses in his conversation to smile at Tooru, the same smile from his gap-toothed childhood, overlaid with sixteen years of keeping one another in orbit. And, really, that’s all there is.

#


End file.
